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WebSocketPolitics & Elections

Kalshi WebSocket API v2

Kalshi WebSocket API v2 is a websocket from Kalshi (CFTC-regulated exchange) providing politics & elections data. Real-time WebSocket market-data feed from Kalshi, the CFTC-regulated US prediction-market exchange. Streams live order books, trades, and ticker prices for election and political event contracts, letting a Polymarket bot cross-reference and arbitrage the competing regulated venue's politics odds in real time.

At a glance

ProviderKalshi (CFTC-regulated exchange)
TypeWebSocket
CategoryPolitics & Elections
Real-timeYes — streaming
AuthAPI key
PricingFree API access; no API fees, pay only standard trading fees (currently 0%) — No upfront cost to access the API; rate-limited by token-bucket tiers, Trading fees only on executed orders (currently 0%, see kalshi.com/fee-schedule), Basic tier: 200 read / 100 write tokens/sec (default 10 tokens per request), Higher tiers (Advanced through Prestige, up to 6,000 read / 8,000 write t/s) earned via trading volume or assigned by Kalshi

What data it provides

  • Real-time order book updates (orderbook_delta channel)
  • Live trade executions (trade channel)
  • Best bid/ask ticker price updates (ticker channel)
  • Market lifecycle / open-close events (market_lifecycle_v2)
  • Private user fills, positions, and order updates (authenticated channels)
  • Election, political, and other event-contract markets (yes/no priced 1-99 cents)

Features

  • Production endpoint wss://api.elections.kalshi.com or external-api-ws.kalshi.com /trade-api/ws/v2; demo environment available
  • Authenticated session required (RSA-PSS signed handshake) even for public channels
  • Token-bucket rate limiting with 7 tiers (Basic 200/100 up to Prestige 6,000/8,000 tokens/sec)
  • Subscription buffer-overflow signaling (error 25) under message bursts; subscribe to smaller subsets to optimize throughput
  • REST and FIX APIs also available alongside WebSocket; OpenAPI/AsyncAPI specs published
  • CFTC-regulated venue — pricing is a legitimate independent reference for US political odds

Links

Use it in a bot

Other politics & elections data sources

Listed, not endorsed. Pricing and capabilities change without notice — check the provider's own documentation before you depend on anything here. Browse the full data resources directory or the strategy database.
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